"Riveting... heartbreaking... worthy ofT olstoy." -Allegra Goodman, The New York Times Book Review "A Wo" rfull b loy \ -.;.> rI Cbook-unfiÎÞtl.:_-, -..,tc,...- , '-,.yand , .' ... plIIIcr. aalhor or , Go to tilt D.sr r..,igh, \ isa Fugard \ It , ... .. , ,,, , . " , 1 rif . s " lIo"c ''A wonderfully brave book---unffinchingly and lovingly written." -Alexandra Fuller, author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight "Lisa Fugard's narrative of apartheid politics and family tragedy could not De more . engrossIng." -Entertainment Weekly ''A fine and admirable accom plishmen t." -Carolyn See, The Washington Post "The spirit of commitment to telling it straight truly enlightens this passionate book" -0, The Oprah Magazine CRIBNE WW.s" I . s.com . , ' ,n of . & S ter 38 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 6, 2006 ANNALS OF PUBLIC POLICY TR.OUBLEMAKER.S What pit bulls can teach us about profiling. BY MALCOLM GLADWELL O ne afternoon last February, Guy Clairoux picked up his two-and-a half-year-old son, J ayden, from day care and walked him back to their house in the west end of Ottawa, Ontario. They were almost home. J ayden was strag- gling behind, and, as his father's back was turned, a pit bull jumped over a back-yard fence and lunged at J ayden. "The dog had his head in its mouth and started to do this shake," Clairoux's wife, JoAnn Hartley, said later. As she watched in horror, two more pit bulls jumped over the fence, joining in the as- sault. She and Clairoux came running, and he punched the first of the dogs in the head, until it dropped J ayden, and then he threw the boy toward his mother. Hartley fell on her son, protect- ing him with her body. 'joAnn!" Clair- oux cried out, as all three dogs descended on his wife. "Cover your neck, cover your neck." A neighbor, sitting by her win- dow, screamed for help. Her partner and a friend, Mario Gauthier, ran out- side. A neighborhood boy grabbed his hockey stick and threw it to Gauthier. He began hitting one of the dogs over the head, until the stick broke. "They wouldn't stop," Gauthier said. "As soon as you'd stop, they'd attack again. I've never seen a dog go so crazy. They were like Tasmanian devils." The police came. The dogs were pulled away, and the Clairouxes and one of the rescuers were taken to the hospital. Five days later, the Ontario legislature banned the owner- ship of pit bulls. "Just as we wouldn't let a great white shark in a swimming pool," the province's attorney general, Michael Bryant, had said, "maybe we shouldn't have these animals on the civ- ilized streets." Pit bulls, descendants of the bull- dogs used in the nineteenth century for bull baiting and dogfighting, have been bred for "gameness," and thus a lowered inhibition to aggression. Most dogs fight as a last resort, when staring and growling fail. A pit bull is willing to fight with little or no provocation. Pit bulls seem to have a high toler- ance for pain, making it possible for them to fight to the point of exhaus- tion. Whereas guard dogs like German shepherds usually attempt to restrain those they perceive to be threats by bit- ing and holding, pit bulls try to inflict the maximum amount of damage on an opponent. They bite, hold, shake, and tear. They don't growl or assume an ag- gressive facial expression as warning. They just attack. "They are often in- sensitive to behaviors that usually stop aggression," one scientific review of the breed states. "For example, dogs not bred for fighting usually display defeat in combat by rolling over and exposing a light underside. On several occasions, pit bulls have been reported to disem- bowel dogs offering this signal of sub- mission." In epidemiological studies of dog bites, the pit bull is overrepresented among dogs known to have seriously injured or killed human beings, and, as a result, pit bulls have been banned or restricted in several Western European countries, China, and numerous cities and municipalities across North Amer- ica. Pit bulls are dangerous. Of course, not all pit bulls are dan- gerous. Most don't bite anyone. Mean- while, Dobermans and Great Danes and German shepherds and Rottweilers are frequent biters as well, and the dog that recently mauled a Frenchwoman so badly that she was given the world's first face transplant was, of all things, a Lab- rador retriever. When we say that pit bulls are dangerous, we are making a generalization, just as insurance com- panies use generalizations when they charge young men more for car insur- ance than the rest of us (even though many young men are perfectly good drivers), and doctors use generalizations when they tell overweight middle-aged men to get their cholesterol checked